Tolerating Crime

I’ve explained elsewhere on MY-T that I attended an oustandingly rough secondary school in the sixties and am no stranger to a violent society. However, there are some things I do not understand about our present state of affairs—shootings, stabbings, drug peddling. When I was growing up there were several incredibly rough estates in the area. Gossip among the kids and their parents was loud and constant. Everyone knew which men on the estates had easy access to weapons, who stole cars, who beat their wives, which kids were violent, etc ,etc. Every now and again squad cars full of police would swoop on these addresses and people would be taken away in handcuffs. Sometimes they would be away for a long time. We always assumed that if we knew who the villains were, so did the police and that alone was a deterrent to many others from embarking on lives of crime.

Later, when working on national newspapers, where gossip was also rife, we all heard tales of traders in all kinds of stolen goods, where to buy almost anything, including guns or drugs. We heard where you could fence anything that was knocked off. One shop near Blackfriars was well known to be the place where stolen car radios or mobile phones could be easily exchanged for drugs or money to buy drugs. We also heard that the police knew as much, if not more, about these felons than we did, yet strangely never seemed to act on their knowledge. Crime reporters would say that the police were unable to justify raids on the premises of these lawbreakers and unable to gain the search warrants enabling them to do so. Other, more cynical types, claimed that it was not in the police’s best interests to do so. This was just petty crime and it was quite handy for them to know exactly where the stolen goods were being fenced.

This later state of affairs appears to have developed alarmingly. It has been revealed that the police in Liverpool already know who instigated the recent shooting of the 11-year old boy but so far have been unable to act on this. It was also stated that the guns were being carried not by gangsters but by youthful petty criminals. I am sorry to say, this but the blind eye attitude towards the petty crime I referred to above has fostered the wave of drug dealing, stabbings and shootings from which our inner cities are currently suffering.

Police intelligence in every town and City must include the names of most of the main drug dealers, gun suppliers and fences operating there and my confusion is that I cannot see why our police forces are now unable to act on this intelligence, even after a major crime has been committed. If I, or any, of the other normally law-abiding citizens in this country, transgress the law in any way, we are almost sure to get our collars felt. Thump a mugger, detain a robber, trap a burglar on illegally installed barbed wire, and we are sure to be prosecuted. So, why, oh why, do we have no confidence that gun crimes, stabbings and violent assaults by known criminals will be prosecuted just as sucessfully?

In order to restore that confidence it is vital that all “blind eyes,” are opened and “zero tolerance,” towards all real criminals is practised rather than just preached by politicians. David Cameron is just the latest to grab headlines by claiming that he will be discussing the concept of “zero tolerance,” with former New York Mayor Rudolph Julianni.

Give me a break! What is there to discuss? Zero tolerance means that anyone known to supply drugs is arrested, as is anyone fencing stolen goods, supplying weapons, demanding money on the streets, soliciting, kerb crawling or in any other way offending civilised society. It is not just directed at those begging, spitting out chewing gum, dropping litter, or writing on walls. It also means that anyone with information which could lead to the prevention, or solving of a crime, will also be prosecuted if they do not willingly supply that information to the authorities.

Laws supporting this concept are already on the statute books and have been for years. Zero tolerance just means that all of us, citizens, police and polticians alike, must refuse to tolerate any criminal activity. So why are we tolerating it now? I would hazard a guess that it’s because tolerance comes cheap, in both effort and money and “zero tolerance” doesn’t.